Spread the curd: At the Camembert Museum in Normandy, cheese-making is something of an art. Tony Kelly sniffs out the real thing

It was while I was on holiday in Normandy that I discovered the world's smelliest museum. My wife, Kate and I, were enjoying a gastronomic trip, walking the Route du Cidre and seeking out new cheeses in country markets. On a rainy day we decided on a long-planned pilgrimage to the village of Camembert, home of the famous cheese.

The market town of Vimoutiers, three miles from Camembert, has a museum where the full story of the cheese is told. Local folklore has it that in 1791 a young farmer's wife, Marie Harel, was giving shelter in her barn to a priest fleeing fanatical republicans during the Revolution. There was nothing much to do except for making cheese.

Marie already made the traditional local cheese but the priest, who came from Brie, suggested an alternative recipe; Marie took the results to market, named after her village, and a new product was born.

We were the only visitors to the museum, so the receptionist put on a tape in English. Surrounded by ancient milk- churns and laurel boxes, we learned of the process by which three pints of milk are turned into a pound of cheese, 45 per cent fat, and matured in oat baskets for two months. Nowadays, Camembert is increasingly made in factories, sometimes with pasteurised milk, but the only true method is 'au lait cru, moule a la louche' - using raw milk, and ladled rather than poured into the mould.

Tyrosemiophiles (cheese-label collectors) would love the museum's ever-growing collection of Camembert labels from as far afield as Chile, Denmark and New Zealand. Anybody can call their cheese Camembert and many imitators do. But like a good wine, true Camembert cannot be imitated. The climate, the grass, the breed of cattle all play their part, so that the connoisseur will always taste the difference between a cheese made from raw Pays d'Auge milk and an impostor.

They take their cheese seriously in Normandy. Like Calvados and tripe and even rice pudding, Camembert has its own order of gastronomy, known as the 'Brotherhood of the Knights of Camembert-tasting'. They dress up once a year like masons to conduct a solemn, and drunken, tasting ceremony; the museum has a photo of the event. If you want to taste the cheese yourself, go on certain days in summer when the museum offers slices of Camembert washed down with the local sparkling cider. But if you're in Normandy you will already have tasted it on every restaurant cheeseboard.

In Camembert itself there is not much to see - only 185 people live there now, in a cluster of houses around the 14th-century church. Serious pilgrims can seek out the Beaumoncel farm above the church, where the invention took place; and the Maison du Camembert shows videos and offers more tastings.

On the last Sunday in July the village holds a patronal festival and a competition for the year's best cheese. I contented myself with a visit to Michel Delorme's farm to buy a beautifully ripe 'Camembert de Camembert'.

There is another cheese museum at nearby Livarot, a town which is also the base for the Route du Fromage, a 25-mile circuit connecting numerous cheese producers. But by now even I was suffering from cheese overkill. Stick to Camembert, and give thanks for the day in 1791 when Marie Harel took in the fugitive priest.

Musee du Camembert, Vimoutiers (010-33 33.39.30.29)

(Photograph omitted)